


the king of cowards

by Ser_Renity



Series: Final Arc [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: A little comfort, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anxiety, Emotionally Repressed, Fear, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, kind of at least, look at those tags and they are all for grimmjow, post-625, posting before the new chapter comes out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3931723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ser_Renity/pseuds/Ser_Renity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re nervous,” Nelliel commented.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the king of cowards

**Author's Note:**

> why do they need to sleep in there? no one knows.
> 
> grimmjow is a nervous wreck and I feel him 100%.

Grimmjow’s fingertips were trembling as if they believed they had never been part of anything more than phantom limbs.

  
“You’re nervous,” Nelliel commented, “Thats alright. I am, too.”

  
“Shut up.”

  
“You don’t have to hide it from me, you know. I’m like your long lost sister. Or at least the last of your kind, so we should work together.”

  
Grimmjow glared at her and scoffed.

  
“Keep it. Even if that mattered to me at all, Harribel is still alive.”

  
“Barely.”

  
“Alive enough to count for more than your stupid ass does,” he said and turned back towards the wall, his fingers tingling with the prospect of the Garganta forming before him.

  
They fell quiet for a moment, just two Hollows occupying space they should not.

  
“You don’t need to worry so much,” Nelliel said after a while, her voice gentle and her eyes kind, “You’ll be fine.”

  
“Just fuck off, will ya?” Grimmjow yelled back at her, “I’m not fucking nervous or worried or any other weak shit like that, I’m just fucking bored of standing around like an idiot just because that shinigami bitch can’t get her shit together.”

  
That shut her up very quickly; his anger always did. In situations like these where silence would be the appropriate choice there was no place for his rage. Grimmjow didn’t care, he forced it into the open and created the only basis for dealing with issues he knew.

  
He cursed under his breath and clenched his hands into fists, stuffed into his pockets. Inside he could feel the cold sweat on his palms, the tiny tremors in the joints of his fingers.

  
The entire room seemed too hot, too small to contain him; with time his restlessness only grew.

  
However, he was aware that Nelliel would comment on it if he shifted too often, if he allowed his face to show.

  
Grimmjow could control his body well enough, stood stiff and slouched like an odd statue. But his eyes betrayed him; they had always given him away, had always been too expressive for his own good.

  
Show no fear and you will have no reason to feel it.

  
“You shouldn’t call her that,” Nelliel said quietly.

  
“Call who what?”

  
“Yoruichi,” she continued and walked up to his side, “She saved your life that one time. When you guarded their place and they blocked your reiatsu.”

  
Grimmjow didn’t answer. It wasn’t worth the oxygen.

  
His eyes flitted back and forth between the empty space in front of him and the Arrancar by his side; he expected a comment any second now and it annoyed him how his pulse sped up at the thought.

  
“How long are they gonna make me wait?” he asked and his voice was rougher than he anticipated, as if he had spent the last days screaming his throat raw. The opposite was true; he barely remembered the last words he had spoken before they came here.

  
“As long as they can afford, I guess,” Nelliel said and spared him the snide comment that undoubtedly rested on her tongue.

  
Grimmjow could feel his leg begin to twitch, followed by a muscle in his cheek, right below his left eye. He reached up to press a hand against it, calm it down with a touch; instead he cut into his fingers with the side of his mask.

  
Looking down on the blood that dripped from the wound he realized this was the first time in days he had accessed his humanoid form. It wasn’t as comfortable in the desert and he had gotten used to the alternative; it felt more like him right now, as if this skin that Aizen forced him into was no longer big enough to contain him.

  
Grimmjow turned and began to pace. His thoughts strayed to places he couldn’t deal with right now, dangerous places of great consequence.

  
“Do you think he’ll be there?” Nelliel asked and sounded awed, “I hope he’ll be there.”

  
“Who the fuck are you talking about?” Grimmjow growled and turned to face her, his treacherous eyes be damned.

  
The look she gave him was one of pity.

  
“Ichigo,” she said as if that was obvious, “Of course I mean Ichigo.”

  
Grimmjow’s stomach convulsed and he wondered if it was possible to develop an ulcer from hating someone too much. He barely even noticed he pressed a hand against his Hollow hole until Nelliel winced and looked at him with honest concern.

Sympathy. Pity. Worry. All the same.

  
“He won’t mind that you’re alive,” she said softly, “You don’t have to-”

  
Grimmjow grabbed her by the neck and shoved her against a wall, his teeth exposed like a wild animal’s.

  
“Shut up,” he hissed and choked her, “Or I swear I’ll-”

  
Nelliel removed his hands from her neck without even blinking twice. She shoved him away before she smoothed down her clothes and adjusted her collar.

  
Grimmjow panted in his rage, his posture still rigid and his mind ill at ease.

  
“I’ve been nothing but understanding when it comes to your insecurities,” she told him and her eyes were as harsh and cold as steel, “But I won’t have your ungrateful stupidity turn into violence.”

  
Grimmjow shrugged and began to pace again, his strides wide and without precision. Despite that he did not stumble around in his confusion, he still appeared elegant and graceful to the outside.

  
His mind was a strange place at the current time.

  
Kill, kill, kill, said the most dominant part, his instincts and everything left over from his days as a Hollow. Destruction came natural to him and his mind begged for it now more than ever. Kill the one who cut you, cut the one who killed you.

  
What the other part wanted he did not know; its desires were confusing and less violent. Grimmjow was uncertain what to do with that aspect of himself, it was strange and unfamiliar. For now it was too difficult to deal with so he pushed it to the back of his mind. There it could grow and straggle in peace.

  
Nelliel’s hand stopped him in his tracks, a warm and comforting touch to his shoulder.

  
“I’m not asking for you to change right away,” she said and he tensed up again, tightly wound like a spring, “I’m just asking you to consider that there might be a different approach.”

  
Grimmjow stared at her, his eyes wide and disbelieving. For a moment it flickered to life, that other thing, that new emotion. Then it died down, buried beneath years of work and learning how to get by with nothing but anger.

  
He didn’t tell her to fuck off this time, only pried her fingers away from his shoulders and stepped forward and out of her reach.

  
“He’ll be happy to see you, too,” Nelliel whispered and sighed, “You don’t have to hide that from anyone.”

  
Grimmjow sneered.

  
“Yeah, right.”

  
Then he crossed his arms before his chest and buried his fingertips in his sleeves. They were still trembling.

 

* * *

 

 

“Grimmjow was really excited to see you,” Nel told Kurosaki later that day, when they were all far gone and prepared to enter into battle, “He wanted to see you so badly he couldn’t even sit still.”

 

Kurosaki laughed and didn’t even seem to mind her as she clung to his arm.

  
“Yeah, that sounds like him alright,” he answered and slumped down against the wall of the black box, “Always ready to jump in and kill me.”

  
“No!” Nelliel chimed in, “What he really wants is-”

  
“I can hear ya, you know,” Grimmjow interrupted her from where he sat. He had chosen a spot as far away from everyone else as possible, cramped into a small corner.

  
“But you wouldn’t tell him!” Nelliel complained and pouted, “Someone has to!”

  
Kurosaki looked confused and Grimmjow couldn’t blame him. However, understanding the confusion and wanting to reveal the truth were two completely different things. Not that there was anything to correct in the first place. He was here to kill the shinigami boy, nothing else.

  
“All he talked about was you, Ichigo!” Nelliel continued quietly and chuckled, “It was kind of annoying, to be honest.”

  
Grimmjow stayed silent and rolled his eyes, turning away from them. He leaned his head against the pitch black wall and closed his eyes. In the darkness he could feel how still his fingers were, how calm the beat of his heart. It was rudimentary, but it gave him a rhythm to listen to, a tact that could even out his breaths.

  
“And when I asked him why he mentioned you in every second sentence he got all defensive and then when I asked about-”

  
“Nel, I think that’s enough now,” Kurosaki said quietly.

  
Grimmjow listened to their hushed voices, but with other people starting to talk it was difficult to filter out their conversation. Not that he was especially interested, anyway.

  
“Sorry,” Nelliel whispered and paused long enough for him to realize she was probably looking over at him, “But someone has to tell you if he won’t.”

  
“Tell me what?” Kurosaki asked, “That he is obsessed with me? I’ve known that for ages, probably since the second time we fought.”

  
Grimmjow remembered that, the exhilaration and fear at seeing the Hollow mask for the first time. Back then the will to fight had still itched beneath his skin like ants clawing at the surface. Only blood could calm him then, the feeling of something living turning into something dead beneath his fingertips.

  
“I just thought,” Nel began, her voice barely audible now.

  
“Thought what?” Kurosaki encouraged her to speak.

  
“I just thought that now that Aizen is gone and you saved Grimmjow’s life, maybe you could be friends.”

  
Grimmjow opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. The darkness was swirling like clusters of stars right in front of him, something ancient, something deep. If he kept looking long enough he could imagine it swallow him whole like the beasts he had encountered in the desert of Hueco Mundo. His head was heavy and his tongue felt like lead.

  
“I don’t think so, Nel,” Kurosaki said and sighed, “That’s not going to happen.“

  
“But you saved him,” she insisted and sounded desperate, her voice a little louder now, “And he is helping you now. Why does it have to be so complicated?”

  
Grimmjow stared and stared until his eyes burned and his gums hurt from clenching his teeth for too long.

  
“I don’t know,” Kurosaki said, “You should sleep now. Tomorrow’s gonna be horrible.”

  
Nelliel muttered a few things, calming words and others to wish a good night.

  
Grimmjow didn’t care what she said, he closed his eyes and shut the world out.

 

* * *

 

 

“I know you are awake,” Kurosaki said quietly as he settled down close to the farthest corner of the black box.

  
Grimmjow ignored him and kept his back turned. His fingers traced small circles on the strange texture of the ground. The movement was hidden by his body and too quiet to make a sound.

  
“You don’t trust us enough to sleep here,” Kurosaki continued and his clothes made a rustling noise as he shifted.

  
Grimmjow was surprised to hear his enemy say that; it was entirely too accurate for his tastes. Even if he had wanted to sleep he couldn’t have; his body wouldn’t let him as long as there were people around he didn’t trust. The only one he knew to be no threat was Nelliel and she was not enough to put his mind at ease.

  
“You want a reward for figuring that out, smartass?” he asked in a low tone.

  
Kurosaki huffed out a laugh.

  
“Look, I’m not here to antagonize you, okay? So just calm down.”

  
“Fuck off, Kurosaki” Grimmjow replied and yawned.

  
Kurosaki did not, in fact, fuck off.

  
“Was it true?” he asked after a while and his voice sounded closer than before, “What Nel said?”

  
“So what if it was? Ain’t gonna change the fact I wanna kill ya.”

  
“That’s what I said as well,” Kurosaki agreed, “But Nel insisted that isn’t what you came here for.”

  
Grimmjow’s fingers stopped drawing lines across the ground. He remembered listening to Nelliel talk for hours on end, always about Ichigo this and Ichigo that. It had never occurred to him that he had done the same.

  
“So is that all you want? Kill me?” Kurosaki asked.

  
Grimmjow hesitated, his entire body perfectly motionless.

  
“Yeah,” he answered and blinked twice to disperse the shadows for a while.

  
“Okay,” Kurosaki muttered and got up. Rustle, rustle, once more.

  
However, Grimmjow still sensed his reiatsu by his side, the familiar pulse of a dark power. It didn’t seem as oppressive as it used to.

  
“Thanks for coming, Grimmjow,” Kurosaki said quietly, “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  
With that he left, body and reiatsu alike.

  
Grimmjow stared into the darkness.

  
His stomach felt hollow for the first time in decades.

  
His fingertips trembled as he started to draw once more.

 

* * *

 


End file.
